This chapter addresses how sexual racism operates in digital spaces among men seeking intimacies. It examines how national racial projects are both structured by and reiterated on spatial media through oscillation between two discourses: colour-blindness and overt racialisation. Drawing from interviews with gay men searching for intimacy on spatial media, such as dating applications, competing and overlapping racial projects are shown to be at the core of individual desire. We demonstrate how these projects contribute to creating, re-shaping, and embracing dominant but silent notions of “Swedishness,” arguing that spatial media not only enables but also prompts and normalises racialisation through digital codes. These findings challenge notions of a colour-blind sexual racism in Western society and instead shift the focus towards how racial differentiation arises in digital everyday intimacies as overt forms of racialisation that echo oppressive aspects of race-consciousness.

Något har hänt i svensk politik. De barnpolitiska förslagen haglar. Frågor om barn och unga har blivit heta. I det politiska samtalet och på nyheterna sammanförs barn och unga, migration och integration, brott och straff, förort och utanförskap på olika sätt. Samtidigt som barns rättigheter har stärkts på flera sätt genom lagstiftning under senare år, ser vi också att politiska förslag som rör barn allt oftare går ut på en sak: ökad social kontroll. Det gäller kanske särskilt de barnpolitiska förslag som rör migration och integration. Den här boken tar därför temperaturen på utvecklingen inom just dessa områden. Bokens fokus gör också att den säger något om den ökade politiseringen av barns integration och välfärd som vi ser i samtidens Sverige.

This literature review summarizes findings from 63 articles published between 2001 and 2020 that study discretion of frontline workers at migration control. The results demonstrate that discretionary practices in various migration control situations (e.g., border zones, migration agencies, courts, public welfare services, and detention centers) are widespread but share common patterns. Frontline workers’ racialized prejudices and perceptions of migrant deservingness were the most dominant patterns found in the data, although there were some disagreements about which were most influential. Discretion of frontline workers was described as foremost detrimental to migrants, as itamplified the migrants’ vulnerable situations, even if it occasionally could increase individual migrants’ room for agency and strategic maneuvering. Contrary to the assumption underpinning the control gap-thesis in immigration policy literature that governments’ capacity to control migration is hampered by the significant discretion at the frontlines, many studies in our sample describe how governments shape the discretionary practices of frontline workers through informal, subtle, and opaque governing strategies. These informal governing strategies enable central governments to deflect responsibility for discriminatory and inhumane policy outcomes. 

Historically, the concept of integration has primarily been connected to labor market participation. However, in later decades, there has been a shift in political discourse, where persons with migration experience are expected – or demanded – to ’integrate’ socially and culturally in ways that rather reminds of assimilation, i.e. the eradication of difference. Children and youth are in the focus of many of these policies. This has meant a sharp increase in the number of regulations in several policy areas, such as education, child welfare and criminal law.

Sweden has been described in the sociological literature as part of a ‘Nordic Model’ striving for social equity, and to some extent, the inclusion of new arrivals and persons with migration experience. However, the Swedish welfare state has been structurally transformed during the last 30 years, combined with a steady growth of regulations aiming to integrate children and youth.

The aim of this paper is to present preliminary findings about the trajectory of this ‘integrative turn’ in child politics and law, a turn that can be traced back to 1990s, a decade during which two parallel and sometimes-contradictory policy tracks were established. One was grounded in debates about gender equality and honour-related violence, while the other originated in expressed political strives to acknowledge Sweden as a multi-cultural society. The analysis draws on traditional legal sources such as legal text, court verdicts, preparatory work and legal scholarship to establish a timeline for the ‘integrative turn’ while simultaneously using text analysis to examine shifts in law and policy. Theoretically, the analysis highlights questions about the relationship between law and emotion, applying concepts such as abject (disgust), love (care/protection) and rage (as resistance to assimilation and an engine of progressive politics). Thereby, this paper goes into dialogue with the field of law and emotion.

This article explores the ways in which the results of language analyses were taken into account when Swedish Migration Agency (SMA) case officers built arguments concerning unaccompanied children's countries of origin. The research literature on LADO has primarily commented on risks of unreliability. Data was drawn from one calendar year of asylum decisions concerning unaccompanied children, and the sample where LADO had been conducted was analysed by qualitative thematic analysis. The main finding indicates that LADO is primarily used as an enhancer of other circumstances present in the asylum case, which means that it has the potential to 'tip the scales' into approval or rejection. The findings also suggest that case officers use the results of LADO in different ways to regulate the issue of credibility depending on the political and geographical dynamics in the children's reported countries of origin. The practical implications are that migration authorities should regularly examine to what extent the results of LADO are given weight in asylum case processing and that the influence of LADO results on individual decisions should be comprehensively explained in child consequence analyses.

Statistics made available by the Swedish Migration Agency (SMA) make it possible to follow first-decision outcomes in asylum cases concerning unaccompanied children (types of residence permits granted, percentage of rejections, etc.). Yet, we know little about differences in asylum decision outcomes for unaccompanied children coming to Sweden. Therefore, we wanted to find out how gender, country of origin, and asylum reports are associated with the likelihood of being granted residency. Asylum decisions concerning unaccompanied children were first coded inductively. These codes were later merged into larger categories that were analyzed quantitatively by logistic regression analysis. The data sample consisted of one calendar year of asylum decisions issued by the SMA. Results show that fewer girls than boys were granted asylum, and in fact, girls have an overall lower prospect of being granted residency. Results also display statistically significant gender differences in reported reasons for seeking asylum.

Det här kapitlet belyser godmanskapet för ensamkommande barn och utgör en översikt av regelverket som styr godmanskapet i Sverige och den forskning som finns på området, både internationellt och nationellt. Regelverket som grundläggs i lag (2005:429) om god man för ensamkommande barn (LGEB) är utgångspunkten för genomgången, men godmanskapet blir därtill placerat i ett vidare sammanhang. Ambitionen är att synliggöra dilemman som kan uppstå i förhållande till överförmyndarens rekrytering och tillsyn av gode män samt relationen mellan gode män och deras huvudmän, det vill säga ensamkommande barn. Sex dilemman identifieras. Det handlar om 1) vad barnet ska ha rätt till utöver skydd mot rättsförluster, 2) gränserna för den gode mannens uppdrag i praktiken, 3) överförmyndarens kvalitativa bedömning i rekryteringen av gode män, 4) barnets möjlighet att yttra sig när en god man utses, 5) riskerna för negativ särbehandling genom att gode män för ensamkommande barn regleras genom speciallagstiftning, samt 6) balansen mellan intentioner att skydda ensamkommande barn ”som grupp” och deras skiftande individuella behov, där särskilt det senare ställer krav på den gode mannens kompetens. Kapitlet avslutas med att lyfta frågan om hur godmanskapet och dess förutsättningar och dilemman kan relateras till integration.